Children play at new football pitches in Azraq refugee camp

Feb 16 / youth football

The new football pitches in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, built by World Vision, One Goal, and the Premier League, are an investment in the happiness and health of Syrian children who live there.

Football gives the children something to participate in, a way to exert their energy into sport, and the pitches provide them a place they can forget about the terror and bloodshed they left behind... even if just for a short time. The perpetual boredom that comes with living in the middle of the desert is escaped through the power of football.

Approximately 28,000 refugees live in Azraq refugee camp in Jordan; 56% of them are children.

"If we didn't have these soccer fields and if there was no way to relax we would have left from here a long time ago," said youth footballers Ahmed (age 15) and Mohammed (age 16).

"When I came to this camp I lost my motivation...honestly. When we first came there was no electricity. Even now there is no electricity. You can take a look, you can see how hard it must be. To be honest with you, life is very bad here," Mohammed (age 15).

In the future we want to go back to Syria. Me and Mohammed want to become soccer players." -Ahmed, 15

"I want to become an engineer and rebuild Syria from the ground up." - Mohammed, 16